The Legacy of James: Onyx Eyes
by Jack Of Some Trades
Summary: An aside to What is Family, which one should read before looking at this. This tells the tail (pun intended) of how James Potter came to become James Potter.


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Disclaimer: This idea is purely mine, though I'm sure someone else has seen it sometime before. I own neither piece of canon that I'm working to my own twisted means.

Author's Note: This is why James is a Saiyan, and why no one seemed to know.

It was a warm day on the planet of Vegeta, of the Fr-03 sector. At least it was as far as Bardock was concerned. In fact, it was very hot. The fact that the cool, calm, and collected Saiyan scientist sweating like a novice on his first mission tended to show that off.

Bardock's mate was in labour. While this isn't truly anything to speak of in the Saiyan race, it was very important to Bardock. His first brat, Raditz, had sworn his first oath of allegiance just two days before to the Saiyan prince, and he knew personally the chances of his son having to live up to that promise.

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Why are those damned doctors taking so long? Bardock thought, pacing the floor. Intellectually, he knew that he should be happy he had any kind of hospital at all; scientists were usually left to their own devices when it came to childbirth. However, for whatever reason, King Vegeta had decided to allow the leader of the Resistance Movement access to his medical facility.

Step. Step. Step. Bardock thought he could actually feel time ticking backwards as he waited.

Finally, after what had to have been years, a doctor walked out of the delivery room, a grim look on his face. As nervous as he was, Bardock's face remained impassive and he tied his tail firmly around his waist out of pure habit. "Well?" he snarled, dark instinct taking precedence over tact.

"Sir, there's a bit… a problem," the doctor sputtered out, eyeing the taller man nervously. Although he could probably tell that Bardock's power levels were lower than his own were, he also knew that the man had proven over and over Lord Frieza's maxim of "It's not always the strongest who wins."

"What is it, fool? Tell me!" Bardock spat.

"You… you have twins," the doctor said finally. Apparently out of patience, Bardock shoved his way past the doctor into the delivery room. His mate had fallen asleep after, exhausted. 

His gaze fell on a small pair of cots next to each other. Two children, one resembling him to a frightening degree, slept rather peacefully. As far as Bardock could tell, his sons were both fine. Ten fingers, ten toes, and one—

"WHERE'S HIS TAIL?" Bardock bellowed at the cowardly doctor. The doctor audibly gulped.

"He was born without one, sir," the doctor said, unwrapping his tail from his waist in an attempt to look less pathetic. "It happens."

"You think I don't know it happens?" Bardock snapped. Then, looking at his son, he sighed. "I do not want my son to grow up a slave."

"I don't believe there's anything you can do, sir. The law clearly states that children born tailless are either executed outright or given to Lord Frieza for slave labour."

The brat without a tail woke up just as the doctor said that. He opened his onyx eyes and stared up at his father. Remarkably, the boy didn't cry like one would expect a newborn to do. He _giggled_.

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Kareta, Bardock thought, naming his son. _Joyous One_. A plan was beginning to form in his head as he lifted the boy. "You're the only person to see him?"

The doctor had his back turned. He was typing something on a display on the wall. "Yes, I think so. The nurse left me before the younger one came out." He turned to look at Bardock, and met a ki-blast. Face-first.

"Good," said Bardock, stepping over the fallen body of the doctor with Kareta in his arms.

~*~

The brat was still smiling as he entered his father's workshop with him. Kareta was obviously fond of the man for some reason, though Bardock wasn't sure why. While the child was obviously bright, he was still only hours old. Everything Bardock knew about psychology (which, admittedly, wasn't a whole lot) said that babies knew nothing about anything until they were at least a month old.

Bardock set the baby down in a specially designed baby carrier he'd made for Raditz when he would take him into the workshop. It wasn't anything to speak of, just a seat with a place to support his head.

Kareta reached no where in particular, watching his father with unfocused eyes. The man was wandering through his workshop, picking at bits here and there, and taking them back to a large machine.

Finally, after an hour (Bardock had had to find some nutritional supplement to feed Kareta, who wailed rather loudly when he wasn't giggling rather loudly) Bardock completed the machine. It strongly resembled a space pod; in fact, a pod's frame had been used for the sake of convenience. However, it was not a pod.

It was a point to point transporter.

The idea had come to Bardock when he heard the legend of a training ground in which you learned powerful techniques, techniques capable of rearranging galaxies. But one in particular, Transmission, stuck with Bardock. He thought about it non-stop. The physics were there, and physics were predictable. If a person could do it, a machine could do it too. This had been the driving force throughout most of his research.

His first few tests turned out well. He moved plants to redundant machines in various workshops around his home. However, there was one major downfall about the machine that kept him from submitting the idea to King Vegeta.

Without another machine to target, the transported person or item would come out in some random area. Completely random. It could send it into the vacuum of space, or a deep ocean, or even the molten hot core of a planet. As long as it wasn't solid, it could land there.

Bardock had just spent the last hour doing highly complex equations in his head and rigging parts from doors and vehicles to his machine. Now, as far as he could tell, the machine was still random. However, it was infinitely safer. It would transport its cargo to the surface a random planet capable of supporting Saiyan life. This term encompassed the vast majority of the universe, but it was safer than sending it anywhere.

The reason Bardock had just spend an hour on something that had no chance of being useful for the rest of time was simple. It was the one thing that existed over a Saiyan's instinct to fight, eat, and care for oneself: his child. _Kareta will not be a slave,_ he thought every time he thought it got too hard.

Bardock set the giggling brat gently into the machine. If he had been less trained, he likely would have cried. As it was, a sad smile flickered on the inventor's face. "Goodbye, my son," Bardock whispered to the babe in the chamber. Unwilling to miss a second of his child's vanishing, Bardock reached over to the lever of the machine with his tail. Activating it, he saw his son disappear in a show of blue light.

Content with the knowledge that his son was safe, Bardock stepped out to the balcony to fly to the hospital. He had one newborn son waiting to meet his father.

~*~

Even in the wizarding world, it's quite uncommon to find a child on one's doorstep. In fact, it's nearly unheard of. However, John and Anna Potter were about to be surprised by such a thing happening.

The boy, as they could tell it was, apparently came from nowhere. He had no identification of any kind. It was as if the baby fell from the sky.

Now, in most happenings such as these, it's the woman that falls in love with the child. However, in this case, John Potter adored the boy from the moment he laid eyes on his messy black hair and ebony eyes. He only fell in love with the boy first, though, because he found the boy first. For whatever reason, the boy was sitting in front of the house when John went outside to Apparate to work. Taking him inside, they contacted St. Mungo's to find out just what one does in such a case.

Suffice it to say, after a lot of red tape, politics, and food (the baby could eat!) the boy became the adopted son of John and Anna Potter. As many young couples do, they duelled about what to name him, but they eventually settled on the name of Anna's father.

The boy with jet-black hair, sable eyes, and a constant grin was given the new name of James Potter.

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It should be explained at this point that Saiyans born without tails were rejected by society. This is why Raditz, Vegeta, Nappa, etc. seem so shocked to see Kakarot like that. A Saiyan is stronger with a tail, and it's very difficult to achieve the same level of training without one. The fact that Kakarot, Vegeta, and their respective children ever achieved the Legendary Transformation says something powerful about them.

For want of a better word, James is Muggle-born. He's raised by a wizard and a witch, but Bardock, his mate, Kakarot and Raditz are all without magical ability. However, not all other Saiyans are…


End file.
